The state of Tennessee, led by State Commissioner Kevin Huffman, whose education experience was limited to his brief tour of duty in TFA, wants to tie teacher pay to evaluations based on test scores (50%) and observations (50%). This method (known as VAM) has been thoroughly discredited by research and by years of failed experience. The Tennessee acronym (deceptive, of course) is TEAM, as if all the teachers and administrators got together and did a big rah-rah for the TEAM that was being judged by a Junk Science metric.

Lo and behold, Jesse Register, the Director of Schools in Nashville, sent out the following memo. Here is a man with guts and glory:

From: Register, Jesse
Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2014 10:29 AM
To: MNPS Teachers – All
Cc: MNPS Teachers – All
Subject: Update on Teacher Pay Plan

I need to inform you of an important update to our proposal to change the way we pay teachers.

Our teacher pay plan task force has spent months developing the proposal and the last several weeks traveling to your schools, talking with you about the proposal, and listening to your questions and concerns. We appreciate your feedback.

At this time, we have decided to defer the decision on tying teacher pay to TEAM evaluations. We still will move forward with changing the way we base pay on advanced degrees and how we recognize and reward teacher leadership, but we will not recommend basing raises on TEAM composite scores at this time.

We may revisit this matter in the future as the evaluation system is refined and as the state and local school systems get more experience with it. We also will continue speaking with you about the evaluation system and hear your thoughts on what you like and what you don’t like.

For now the work continues. Our Strategic Compensation Steering Committee made up of teachers, parents, and district administrators will keep meeting and developing the proposal.

While all of that happens, you can keep up to date on this process by reading Monday Memo and checking the Employee Portal.

We believe in a strategic pay plan that rewards and retains the very best teachers. We will work to make that a reality here in Nashville.

Thank you for helping us through this process, and thank you for all you do for your students every day. Together, we will make Metro Nashville Public Schools the top-performing urban district in the nation and the first choice for Nashville’s families.

Jesse Register

Director of Schools